


Heads and Tails

by jackabee



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Gratuitous Cookie Baking, Paradox Clone Bonding, Post!Sburb AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-11
Updated: 2013-11-11
Packaged: 2018-01-01 04:38:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1040423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jackabee/pseuds/jackabee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's the only one who can talk to that other self. Everyone else's is long dead. Well, technically, so is she.</p><p> </p><p>A small piece for 11/11, anniversary of the beginning of Act 6 and our introduction to Jane Crocker - for all she is, was, and could be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heads and Tails

The Tiaratop left a scar around the crown of your head. You can brush your hair in such a way where it’s nearly invisible, but you still feel it there, your skin tight when you move a certain way, your friends catching sight of the lighter gash and averting their eyes. When you’re not in bed – and they insisted you stay in bed and rest for your own good, for God’s sake Jane, you can hardly stand – you keep your ratty old fedora on, making sure it’s pulled down as far as it can go. It makes it easier on everyone else and it makes you feel a little closer to normal.

But you barely leave your room. Not because you’re too weak, but because you’re ashamed – no, ashamed doesn’t even begin to describe how you feel, and if that wasn’t as obvious as a black eye or a smoking gun then color you surprised.. You’re disgusted with yourself, with everything you said or did whether you were in your right mind or not, because really, there was very little between who you were normally and who you were turned into. All you had been given was undeniable trust and confidence in those honeyed words; of _course_ you can do this, of _course_ you can have him, everything you ever desired is yours tenfold and there was no need to deny yourself, as if an heiress shouldn’t have everything she wished for. These things still stick to the dark corners of your mind, temptations declawed and fangless and yet enough to keep you awake when you should be sleeping and far away from that glittering jewel of a new world as the others alighted to and fro, chattering at dinner about the fauna and the flora and how the new sun casts such a golden light upon sunrise and sunset that all the pain was worth it.

They don’t ask why you don’t visit. Perhaps they don’t want to know why, and you don’t want to burden them.

Your friends, bless their hearts, they try to make you smile. Roxy brings you back flower crowns every evening without fail, made from blossoms that seem to have sprung from your wildest imaginings. Dirk checks on you in the mornings and makes you get up and stretch and walk around, talking your ear off about everything and nothing. Jake is…too scared to actually speak to you alone and in person, and you don’t blame him, but he writes you letters about his exploits on the planet below, how he helped one family build a house one day and went spelunking for crystals on another and how he hopes you feel well enough to see it all for yourself soon. You can’t bring a pen up to reply without filling pages with apologies, so you keep your responses crumpled up and underneath your bed. Sometimes your Poppop – John, you often chide yourself – visits too, probably out of some weird remnant of familial obligation, but he’s nice enough and doesn’t carry the same caution that lingers in your friends.

So while you’ve cut yourself off from your fellows, you’re still used to company, and when you wake up one day and no one stops by to knock at your door, you get curious. With slow, heavy footsteps you approach your door, turn the knob and open it up…

Your Prankster’s Gambit takes a serious hit when ice cold water drenches you from above, and a bucket clatters to the ground at your feet as a wheezy mimic of your laughter echoes from downstairs. The shiver that runs up your spine is something you can’t help; you’re very loosely acquainted with this sprite, since she is usually anywhere else but here, and frankly it’s _weird_ to know that there’s a person who is essentially _you_ but not you floating around. It’s uncomfortable and strange and you avoid thinking about it on a daily basis, but you certainly can’t now, oh no. Even through your melancholy, you itch to take a hand at japery again.

“That was awfully rude,” You call out as you descend into the living room. A lash of cyan appears at the entrance to the kitchen, and the sprite peers out at you, a smile crinkling the corners of her eyes.

“Yes, but it brought you out, didn’t it?” She asks, and she floats out to meet you, funny arm extended, hand expecting to be shaken. You oblige begrudgingly after checking for a buzzer. “I do hope you don’t mind me dropping by,” She says, tugging you gently towards the kitchen, “But I was in the area and thought I’d visit, and I couldn’t resist! You’ve really got to be on your guard, missy!”

“Yes ma’am,” You say, and remember to keep your eyes peeled.

The kitchen is actually prank-free, to your surprise, and instead there are platters and trays of various kinds of cookies; when you walk in the smell hits you like a delicious, decadent wall. She insists you sit down, and you do, watching with quiet interest as the floating sprite putzes around your kitchen like it’s her own, pulling ingredients down as easily as your Dad would, whenever he went on one of his grand baking sprees. When a batch of something that looks to be snickerdoodles is slid into the oven, she pauses to give you something to eat – or, more accurately, insists you try some of her wares, and when you politely refuse, insists again.

“Humor an old woman, won’t you?” She says, and she’s holding out a platter of chocolate chip cookies. “I’ll even break out the milk and join you!”

That gives you pause. “Do sprites even need to eat?” You ask, and she laughs, the sound still strange to your ears, and you cannot look at her too closely, because she ducks her head and wrinkles her nose just like you know you do.

“No, but tell me you’d turn down a cookie even as a harlequin ghost and I’ll know you’re lying.” She winks her scarred eye and leaves you with the platter, and in no time at all there’s milk on the table and she’s sitting down, or as close as something without a real behind _can_ sit. You take a cookie to be polite, and-

Okay, you really can’t help the gasp of surprise you make, because this has got to be one of the best cookies you’ve ever eaten. Not _the_ best (you say that on principle because your Dad’s cookies have always been to die for), but simply divine, and the sprite gives you a knowing look.

“You like them,” She says, and you nod. She leans back in relief. “Oh, good. That’s a very old recipe of mine, you see. It used to be my mother’s.”

“I thought we were clones,” You say, the explanation of ectobiology still fuzzy and suspect in your mind – though you do remember very clearly that you and your friends were paradoxes in and of yourselves. The sprite nods.

“Yes, yes, that’s right. She was my adoptive mother.” That word – mother – it was sour on her tongue, though she kept her expression quite kindly. “What an awful old witch she was! But only when no one was looking. When I was your age, I felt that beating her at her own baking game was the only way to put her in her place, so I learned her every recipe by heart and set out to improve them.” She taps the platter with her finger. “And these cookies were the hardest by far. I used to think she put something secret and vile in them to win over so many folks, but if she did I never figured it out.”

You make sure to take a sip of milk before you speak, your mouth sticky with sweetness. “But _are_ they better?” You ask, and she looks at you with eyebrows raised.

“I certainly wouldn’t be proud to make them if they weren’t,” She said, and you understand that somehow, on a level where your pride burns and boils in the face of your own failings. When you come to your senses again, she’s leaned closer, cupping her mouth with her hand. “Would you like to know how I did it?” She asks. You blink.

“Um, sure! Of course!”

What you expect to hear is something like “Love”, or “A pinch of care” as the secret clincher, but the sprite grins and says, “Triple the vanilla extract! And maple syrup instead of brown sugar. What a difference a little experimentation makes, I’ll tell you!”

Okay, you can’t help this either, nor are you sure where it comes from – but for the first time in a long while, you laugh long and hard, and you consider putting off your Gambit revenge.

Well, until tomorrow at least.

**Author's Note:**

> This was going to be longer, but all I could get out was this...


End file.
